The Branch half-day event and ICorr AGM took place in the Chamberlain Room & Main Chamber of the Birmingham Council House on Wednesday 29th November 2017.

The event was well attended and after lunch and refreshments attendees were welcomed to the council chamber by Trevor Box, Midland Branch Chair. The first presentation was on the “Hammersmith Flyover Strengthening – Repairing the Effects of Corrosion” by Graham Stanford of Freyssinet. Graham’s interesting presentation covered the damage caused to the post tensioned structure and remarkable repair techniques employed to strengthen and repair this critical piece of London’s infrastructure.

The second presentation of the day covered an Innovative Solution for the Prevention of Crevice Corrosion at Pipe Supports by Clive Evans of Deepwater EU Ltd. Clive’s presentation dealt with Deepwater’s pipe support system to deal with crevice corrosion and the problems caused by crevice corrosion to pipes across a range of industrial sectors.

The next presentation dealt with the Cable Impregnation Technique for Corrosion Protection of Grouted Post-Tensioned Tendons by Peter McCloskey of Vector Corrosion Technologies. Peter explained this relatively new technique which has been developed by Vector in North America to deal with corrosion of tendons in grouted ducts of existing post tensioned structures.

The final presentation was an overview of “Cathodic Protection Training and Certification: The ISO Requirements” by Jim Preston, Corrosion Prevention Limited. Jim covered in detail the recent changes to the ISO standard and the implications of future training and certification requirements.

At the end of the presentations a lively panel discussion took place with some excellent questions from the attendees and much discussion between the attendees and the presenters.

The day was brought to a close by the ICorr AGM which included the financial report for the year.

Midland Branch has a new sustaining member, SegCorr Ltd, Independent Consultants Specialising in cathodic protection and corrosion management (more details can be found in preceding section).

The second presentation of the 17/18 season was a joint meeting with TWI, and James Hesketh of the National Physical Laboratory gave a presentation on the Influence of H2S on the Pit to Crack Transition in Sour Testing of Corrosion Resistant Alloys.

James Hesketh received a vote of thanks from Stephen Shapcott of TWI on an excellent presentation and received gifts from both TWI and ICorr.

James highlighted that stable pitting is a precursor to sulphide stress corrosion cracking (SSCC), which is one of the main causes of failure of stainless steel pipelines used in sour Oil and Gas production. Despite this, the underlying mechanism governing the growth of such pits is poorly understood, and hence materials selection for sour service is dependent upon costly and time consuming environmental exposure and SSCC test programmes.

In the study at NPL, the role of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) in pit propagation was investigated as a first step towards the development of accelerated test methods for SSCC resistance. Novel electrochemical techniques were employed to determine the relationship between bulk solution chemistry and the critical pit chemistry required to induce stable pitting in sour environments. James stressed that electrochemical measurements are correlated with results obtained from standard SSCC tests and are rationalised in terms of the balance between H2S diffusion through the pit mouth, H2S consumption within the pit and the role of the external cathode.

He also explained that there was a systematic decrease in pit size with increasing H2S concentration. Also that a greater peak current was measured at higher H2S concentrations and repassivation was slower.

The 29th London Branch Lunch, held at The Royal Overseas League in early December, was another huge success with 177 people attending the event in Mayfair London.

Guests started to arrive at 11.30 for a pre-lunchdrink and were seated by 12.30 for the first of two acts by The Sirens a group of three singing performers, which was really well received and set the scene for the afternoon. The meal was yet again excellent and congratulations to the ROSL who never disappoint. After the lunch the Chair of London Branch thanked the luncheon organising committee ad the branch committee, who continue to drive the Institute in London forward.

The President then addressed the guests to a rapturous applause once again thanking everyone for their support and explaining that the Institute has exciting plans that will start in Q1 2018.

After the raffle, two guests were honoured with a small gift in recognition of them receiving the Tallow Chandlers Award for their work in materials and corrosion, a tremendous achievement by Charlotte Vie in 2016 and Simon Bowcock in 2017.

The timing for the event this year was slightly different allowing guests to socialise and network at the ROSL until 7.00pm which appeared to be extremely popular with lots of notes being taken and exchanging of business cards.

Thanks go again to all those that assisted in the organisation of the event and we look forward to another exciting event in December 2018. Hamed Habibi, Technical Director of Speir Hunter Ltd, gave an interesting presentation entitled “Developments in Remote Magnetic Monitoring of stress in ferromagnetic Pipeline” at the January meeting.

The talk introduced and explained the benefits of stress monitoring in pipeline integrity management. It is the only inspection technique that can simultaneously map the lateral position and depth of cover of a pipeline whilst providing comprehensive defect detection.Several case studies were discussed to illustrate the advantages of this the technique, also known as Stress Concentration Tomography, over traditional inspection methods.The technique is able to assess condition of buried pipelines remotely and is not dependent on the type of defect, size of pipe, construction configuration or operating condition, and cansave a considerable amount of time, effort and budget while providing an accurate 3 dimensional mapping of a pipe and surrounding objects.The technique can also identify location of casings and wrinkle bends, information becoming required by the regulatory authorities.

The Branch continued its successful 2017-2018 session with a high turn-out (68 attendees) at its joint event with the Mining Institute of Scotland (MIS) and IOM3 Oil and Gas Division, (Over the last few years MIS has established a strong working relationship with the Aberdeen branch and holds an annual joint technical evening that is funded alternatively).

The key topic under discussion was Corrosion under Insulation (CUI).This is a major issue for not only the oil and gas sector, but industry in general, with an estimated annual cost to the UK of £28 billion. The event started with a buffet and a poster presentation from Tianyang Lan, a MSc student from Northampton University, who presented the experimental work that he had been undertaking, assessing both physical and electrochemical techniques for measuring CUI.Two physical methods and two electrochemical methods were used in this test work, Eddy Current Testing (ECT), IR Thermography (IRT), Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and Electrochemical Noise Method (ENM). The samples used to conduct the experiments were carbon steel panels at different corrosion stages, used to simulate the pipe condition, with standard maintenance organic coatings and insulation tapes representing the pipe insulation. Results have indicated that ECT/IRT could not discriminate rusting beneath a coating when it was greater than about 250microns thick however the electrochemical methods showed immense promise. Insulation of course covers all signs of corrosion.

MIS, with IOM3 Oil and Gas Division, had arranged two technical presentations. The first was given by Rebecca Allison of the Oil and Gas Technology Centre, (OGTC, a public / private initiative), who introduced the topic of CUI and the role of the OGTC in addressing the challenges of CUI.Rebecca provided an overview of new technologies being supported by the OGTC and got comprehensive feedback from the audience on these, however she highlighted that addressing CUI is not just about technology, a holistic approach including working practices, procedures, competency, human factors and data management is required.

Bill Brown and Mike Dixon of The Rope Access Company (TRAC) then built on the overview provided by Rebecca with a presentation providing results from their field and yard trials assessing the latest tools and techniques available to measure and analyse CUI, which included developments with pulsed eddy current and digital radiography. Field and yard work highlighted key issues for practitioners to be aware of.

The Oil & Gas Industry has experienced many challenges when inspecting for Corrosion under Insulation (CUI), assessing the condition of steel components under Engineered Composite Wraps and the minimum remaining wall thickness under surface scabs / blisters. The aim of their OGTC supported project is to try and determine the limitations of the available NDT methods relative to each application. TRAC plans to share the ongoing research and development overview obtained to date.

At closing, a warm vote of thanks to all the presenters was made by the new MIS President Bob Laird for their valuable contributions which were very much appreciated by all those in attendance.Next year’s joint meeting is already scheduled for 27 November 2018 at the Palm Court.

Information about all forthcoming Aberdeen branch activities can be found on the diary page of the magazine and on the Institute website, a calendar of local events of interest to corrosion professionals in the Aberdeen area and the opportunity to sign up to the branch mailing list is available at https://sites.google.com/site/icorrabz/home. Aberdeen Branch have also established their new Media Centre on LinkedIn, which can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aberdeen-icorr/recent-activity/

The company specialises in cathodic protection and corrosion management, and their skills include condition assessment, identification of deterioration mechanisms, development of rehabilitation techniques, the design and specification of corrosion management solutions using galvanic and impressed current CP, protective coatings, material selection and concrete repair.

They are experienced in the development of new build and life extension designs which offer whole life cost benefits for critical reinforced concrete and metallic infrastructure. Staff include Level 3 Senior Cathodic Protection Engineers and NACE Certified Corrosion and Cathodic Protection Specialists.

An increase in demand for ICorr certification courses is leading to an increase in international delivery of the Paint Inspector, Fireproofing and Insulation Inspector and Cathodic Protection Technician courses, and recently, ICorr trainer Nigel Peterson-White delivered Fireproofing and Insulation Inspector Level 2 courses to 18 delegates in Busan, South Korea. The high calibre attendees came from multinational organisations such as Samsung, Daewoo and Hyundai, and working in industries such as shipping, marine and oil and gas.

Delegates completed 5 days of training and examinations covering the inspection of common types of passive fire protection as well as both thermal (hot and cold) insulation and acoustic insulation.

This training was arranged in conjunction with the Corrosion Science Society of Korea (CCSK). The CCSK is a technical society devoted exclusively to scientific and technical activities relating to corrosion and corrosion prevention.

Full details of all training and Qualification courses available, and dates of these, can be found on the Institute website.